It's getting to be that time...

Uh oh. So here we are, June has practically come to a close and as the firsts of the good friends that I've made here in the past couple months begin to leave, whether I like it or not I am being forced to reflect even more on my time here than I have in the past.

My classes have pretty much come to an end - all that remains is to turn in one final paper for a seminar on Argentine political history, one of my favorite classes due to the insight that it offered on the society in which I've been living for the past 5 months. Following the history and the political development of this country through this class has been extremely interesting, especially when through detailing some past conflict, our professor can help shed some light on the issues that are plaguing Argentina today, most especially the distrust of the economy and of the executive branch of the government. These are things that I never would have been able to gain a reasonable understanding of before.

I've decided that these were the classes that were most worthwhile - the seminar, my class on political economics, and my Spanish class. These were the classes that either through the subject matter (economics) or the mission, were able to truly enrich my experience by reaching out to me and letting me understand better Argentina and its people. The best advice I can give for future USAL exchange students is to get a feel for the professors of your prospective classes. The university is good enough to give you a period of several weeks in which you can test out various courses - during this time, the best thing to do is to take into consideration which of the professors are truly interested in you as an international student, and in what they as professors and sometimes mentors can do to truly maximize your experience but, perhaps more importantly, your understanding of that experience and its context.

The past months have been amazing in so many ways, and while it is sometimes difficult to look past the thrill and the spectacle of whatever trips I've taken (truly wonderful and eye-opening experiences), when I really think about what the best part of my time here as been, I have to say that it's been the opportunity to get to know the people with whom I am sharing this experience. Discussions with not only Argentine friends and acquaintances, but with the other international students as well, have provided a really invaluable opportunity to analyze and compare outlooks, customs, and ways of life from a great, wide variety of perspectives. The ideas of why things are the way that they are, or how they came about or how they could be improved vary greatly based on where people come from and what they know - I have found that the sharing of those opinions has been truly worthwhile.

And it is through that sharing that I have been able to make some of the greatest and most fulfilling friendships of my life (I am beginning to worry that this is starting to sound like a study-abroad brochure, but it is the truth). Perhaps this all sounds extra-cheesy due to how sentimental I am now that all of the friends I've made here are beginning to head back to wherever they came from, but the seemingly endless despedidas combined with all the extra time I have on my hands now that classes are ending makes it nearly impossible not to be reflective. One of the things that I have learned here has been to never underestimate how much you can learn from somebody, no matter what your first impression of them may be. When you are going through an experience like this one, I honestly believe that meeting as many people as possible and listening to as many of their stories as you can shoud be of the highest priority - it is through this that your experience can be truly life-changing.

Argentina: Striking sense of political responsibility

Farmers renew protests

Looking back on the last few months, one of the most striking differences between Argentina and the United States is the amount of protesting that goes on, and how completely dedicated the Argentine people seem to be when it comes to showing their government how they feel. It's been said for a while that in the United States we have a huge problem of political indifference, and that indifference is easy to see when you look at statistics such as voter turnout, etc. But after coming here, the difference has been blown into surprising contrast.

Maybe I would have a different perspective if I lived in DC, and was close enough to the seat of the federal government in the United States that I'd see more of the political activity that goes on. And legitimately, the differences between the two countries - in government, in infrastructure, in armed forces - all play a part in this difference as well. But it is a truly affecting thing to be walking through the city and to be able to hear the banging together of pots and pans from a mile away simply because of the amount of people that are participating, and then to hear the protest spread as the drivers in the streets take up the cause by sounding the car horns, and before you know it the entire city is full of noise, and completely immersed in the demonstration.

I was lucky enough that while I was here, I was in 2 classes that helped me to understand better Argentina as a country and how it worked. I have a better understanding now of Argentina's tumultuous (understatement) political and economic history, and at least a basic understanding of the differences between how their government and our government work. For example - the problem that we have in the United States with low voter turnout is something that here doesn't exist - voting in all elections is something that is obligatory for every person of age. Maybe this has something to do with the greater sense of political responsibility.

Effects of farming strikes

I don't know if it would right to say that I am "fortunate" to be in Argentina now and know the country and the people at this particular time; because right now is certainly a rough time for the country and its people. Inflation and taxes are rising at record levels and the peoples' salaries can't quite keep up, and the government and the Central Bank seem to be proving themselves over and over again to be not quite competent when it comes to handling the current problems of the country. But I do definitely appreciate the experience and the perspective it's offered.

Oops.

Well guys, clearly I haven't proven extremely regular with the blog thing - I've started a couple posts here and there, on various things, but things here have been a little bit crazy after the semester finally warmed up and so it's been a little bit difficult to just take some time and write a post.

It's been about four and a half months now that I've been down here, and although when I left the States in January I thought that the beginning - the first month or so - would be the most difficult, I think that this title belongs to the period I'm going through now. It's reached the point now where the spring semesters are over in the States, and a lot of friends are home for the summers now, doing various combinations of work and enjoying themselves, and while it would be ridiculous to complain about how I'm missing out on just hanging out, making trips to the beach, etc, that is the part of home that I tend to miss the most. It would appear that the real homesickness has finally set in.

But - it's a complicated feeling. I miss the States and my people there, while at the same time knowing that I am in no way ready to think about leaving here yet. The people that I've met here have made this easily one of the greatest experiences of my life, and I am not even close to prepared for that to be over. It's difficult to think that starting in just a couple weeks, I'll begin to be separated from the people that have been a fairly constant part of my life since February. Knowing that this is true makes us want to go out and celebrate every day we have left in Buenos Aires, and really seize the last of the time that we have, but this too is frustrating, because now is the time when the semester is coming to an end, and most of us are too swamped with work to be able to go out without at the very least feeling guilty about spending the time doing something other than studying. I even feel guilty about working on this post instead of studying.

So, because of the fact that I haven't written in a while, and how because of this, this blog is missing out on a lot of details/opinions of my experiences here, the next few entries are going to be relatively short ones on some of the things about Argentina that are different from home, whether they be things that I'm going to miss or just simple observations. Some of them will be the ones that I've started but not finished in the last month or so, and then maybe some new ones as well. Sorry for the long delay.

Thoughts on the USAL housing options...

One of my biggest struggles here in Argentina was with the places I was living. It took almost 3 months for me to find a situation that actually worked for me - I'm now living in my own apartment more or less in the center of the city. As one of the reasons for this blog is as a resource for my University, and therefore potentially a resource for students looking to study abroad in Buenos Aires in the future, I thought it would be good to write about the different housing options available to the exchange students, so that maybe they have a little bit more information than I did when I made the decision on where I'd be living.

For my first month here, I lived in a student residence called Proyecto Alfa 2000. I generally enjoyed my time in the residence (here, endearingly referred to as "la resi") but I think if I stayed for more than just my first month, I would have a very different opinion. I came to Buenos Aires a month before the beginning of the semester to participate in USAL's Curso Intensivo de Español, and it was for the CIE that I was staying in the residence. This time was good for me because the majority of the other people participating in the CIE lived in the residence as well during this time, so it was a really great opportunity to get to know and build friendships with people from all over the world. The best thing about living in a student residence like Alfa 2000 is the opportunity for meeting people and making friends. Chances are you'll be paired with an Argentine roommate, and the residences are packed with people from all over Latin America, who are generally all really friendly and fun. The main drawbacks to the residences are the rules - drinking is not allowed, most of them don't allow visitors from outside the residence to be anywhere besides the common areas, and having guests in your room (even people who also live in the residence) is generally frowned upon. A lot of American friends who stayed in the residence after the CIE have gotten very frustrated with the lack of privacy, and many of them feel as though they aren't treated like adults. However, out of all of the housing options, the residence is definitely the best for making quick friends your age who help you figure out the quirks of the city and can show you some of the best places to go out and have a good time.

After the CIE I lived with a Argentine host family. This is the experience that would probably be the most variable, and I've heard different stories from friends who have also lived with a host family, but there are some things that seem to be cultural common denominators. For example, Argentines (and perhaps Latin Americans in general) tend to see their home as being a very sacred and personal space - you should be honored that they've opened their home to you. They tend to accept you immediately into the family - but you have to be open enough to take advantage of that. If you're shy and you think that you'd have trouble with the idea of participating in a huge family function where everyone has known each other for years and 8 different conversations are going on at once, all in loud, fast Spanish - you might want to think about another option. In order to really get all the host family has to offer, you have to really participate in the life of the family. Have dinner with them, join them for their asados (basically, barbeques that last all afternoon), ask them questions and share information about yourself, too. I think that with the host family experience, what you get out of it is about equal to what you're willing to put into it - from what I've heard, the people who have had the best experiences have been the people who were really willing to participate. But in regard to what I said before about the home being sacred - the biggest problem for me about life with a host family was the fact that (like in the residence) visitors are a problem. Just having a friend "drop by" or have someone come back from class with you to study generally isn't allowed. If you bring a friend by, you should ask permission first and be prepared to introduce the friend to the head of household. Your host family is generally going to want to know who comes into their house and when, and to bring somebody by without notifying them first and getting permission is considered extremely disrespectful. This was the once cultural adjustment that I couldn't make - it was too important to me to have my own space where I felt comfortable inviting people over for whatever reason.

If, like it is to me, it's important to you that you have your own space and the freedom that that comes with, the apartment is the option for you. If you organize it through USAL chances are you'll be placed with other international students, but it is sometimes possible to be placed with an Argentine student (better for practicing your Spanish) if you let them know that that's what you want. It's also fairly easy to find an apartment on your own once you're down here (cheaper if you have a roommate, obviously) and something that many people from the CIE did was to stay in the residence for the first month and begin their search for an apartment while there. It's usually possible to find something and get everything set up within about 2 weeks. What you miss out on in an apartment (especially if you're on your own or with international students who also aren't familiar with the city) is the information resource that the residence and the host family provide. In the residence and with the host family, its easy to figure out which bus to take to get where, what's the deal with the latest protests going on around the city, etc.

Hope that might be helpful to some future intercambios :)

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

For my third trip out of the city of Buenos Aires, I traveled to Rio de Janeiro with my friends Lennart and Shannon.

It's difficult now (afterwards) to think about what my opinion of the city was before going there. I think that I had impressions of beauty and lots of color and culture, but I know that those impressions would have also included ones of violence, danger, and poverty.

Now, looking back, I have to say that its one of the cities that I absolutely have to recommend going to if you have the chance. (Unfortunately, the cost and inconvenience of getting a tourist visa for a U.S. citizen might be enough to persuade you otherwise - about $170 and several trips to your nearest Brazilian consulate are involved) But, if you get there, you will be able to experience what is without a doubt one of the most aesthetically beautiful cities in the world, populated with some of the warmest, friendliest, and most attractive people you'll ever have the chance to meet.

The city is located on the eastern coast of Brazil, far enough north that it has a relatively beach-worthy climate all year round. By some natural phenomenon that I'm not aware of, the landscape is made out of these crazy, steep, rounded mountain that seem to simply just rise straight out of the ocean. There would seem to be some kind of battle for the livable territory that these mountains provide between the city and the forest, a battle that the forest would appear to be winning. Rio is perhaps the only major city I have heard of to be situated not beside, but AROUND a national park. It almost seems unfair that Rio be able to possess all of these different kinds of beauty - the whitesand beaches with tall, surf-worthy waves, the towering mountains from which you can watch breathtaking sunsets over the city, and the rich forest populated with the kind of exotic wildlife (toucans, monkeys) that one would normally associate either with a zoo or the untouched tropical rainforest.

Towering above everything else is the Cristo Redentor (Christ the Redeemer). The amazing statue perches in a way that seems impossible on top of Rio's highest peak. The size of the monument coupled with the difficulty of its erection (a special train had to be built going up the side of the mountain - "steep" doesn't even begin to describe it) has earned the Cristo status as one of the new 7 wonders of the world, and with reason. The statue is truly breathtaking, as is the view from its feet, as you can see almost the entire city (including the innumerable favelas) stretch out beneath it, and the smaller mountains rising out of the sea in the distance. And the best part of about the Cristo is the way that it represents the Brazilian view on Christianity - there is no sense of sadness or guilt involved as with the more common image of the crucifix - the Cristo's arms are stretched out in a warm gesture of love and welcome. The grandeur combined with this somewhat unique portrayal make the visit a rather inspiring one.

Besides the amazing imagery and people, possibly the most interesting and affecting thing about Rio are the stories of its famous favelas, or slums. These ridiculously expansive communities are remarkable not only for their size, but for the fact that, unlike in most cities where the slums lay on the outskirts, these are scattered all through the city, often in the shadows or between the city's wealthiest neighborhoods.

I wasn't sure how I felt at first about doing a tour of the favelas - to me it seemed kind of like voyeur. But Shannon and Lennart wanted to do it, and the first thing that the tour guide told us was that the people in the favelas wanted us to be there - they felt that it gave them a chance to fight against the prejudices of violence that were widespread around the city and around the world. They succeeded in doing that - it seemed as though all of the people we encountered were warm and friendly, interested in us and what we were doing and eager to be sharing their own stories. I half expected the favela experience to be a depressing one, but instead it turned out to be something inspiring. In the areas where the people had taken an interest in making the places better, the favelas had a strange but palpable beauty to them, rich with colors although the closeness of the quarters shrowded most of it in shadow. It was an amazing and eye-opening experience. I could never imagine living life with the same hardships that these people dealt with every day - drugs, violence, poverty and discrimination were simple facts of life for them, yet the kind of mobilization that was being undergone to change these "slums" into close-knit, often beautiful communities where family and education were the priorities was truly amazing.

The favelas give another side to a city that might otherwise seem like something out of a dream. Some of the memories border on being truly surreal - sitting on beautiful Ipanema beach sipping on coconuts while watching beautifully tanned and muscled men playing soccer seemed like something out of a dream. In a lot of ways, Rio seemed like a kind of black hole, something you could just get sucked into in a matter of hours and then never again have a desire to go back to where you came from. It didn't help that the area around our little community of hostels was always packed full of people from various places who had come to Rio with the intention of just seeing the city and then passing through but had then never left. It was easy to see the appeal of such a scenario, with the beautiful landscape, always-perfect weather, and gorgeous, warm, and inviting atmosphere that Rio's people gave the the city. In many ways, it was a true paradise.

I was glad that I went and experienced the city, but I'm not sure if I feel as though it is a place that I would need to return to some day.

Humo por las calles (Smoke in the streets)

Well, I logged into CNN.com yesterday and discovered that this was one of the "Top Stories" worldwide, so you may have already heard, but the name Buenos Aires, or "good winds'', doesn't really apply to this city right now.

This past week, some farmers in the provinces of Buenos Aires and Entre Rios decided to set fire to their fields, allegedly to clear the fields of weeds, etc, before planting again. The fires got out of control and have now continued to burn for over 4 days, and Buenos Aires is completely overrun with smoke, to the extent that many people put on masks or cover their faces with scarves while walking in the streets. It's caused traffic accidents because it's difficult to see on the highways outside of the city, and a lot of the routes have been shut down because of it. Also, all flights going into the regional airport are being redirected.

The picture included here was taken a few days ago, and the smoke has only gotten worse. It's of 9 de Julio, which is the biggest avenue in the city (I think possibly in the world, as well). In the center of the avenue is the Obelisco, possibly the most well-known monument of Buenos Aires. When I was at 9 de Julio yesterday, the Obelisco was hardly visible.

Anyway, they're saying that the winds are going to change soon and blow the smoke out of the city, but chances are it's going to stay like this for a few days more. Another reason that I'm writing is because there is a lot of speculation (nothing official) that the farmers who set the fires let them get out of control on purpose, in connection to what I wrote about in the post below.

Political Post!

Really the prime time for this post would have been a few weeks ago when all of this was getting started and was really intense and affected my life the most. BUT I was concentrating on the Mendoza/Santiago post then, as well as on working out my schedule and acclimating to all of my classes, etc, so we're going to do it now, instead. Besides, from what I hear, any news of what's been going on down here hasn't hit the waves in the States until recently, so as far as that's concerned, I guess this is actually somewhat timely.

I took a weekend trip to Montevideo in Uruguay a couple weeks ago - as a result of this, I was not only out of the city, but out of the country when things started getting kind of hot and tense in the city. Apparently there were tons of protests right away (Monday and Tuesday, the 24th and 25th of March), but they had been pretty much confined to Plaza de Mayo so far, so there wasn't so much going on in my part of the city. Then on Wednesday, my economics professor brought it up vaguely in class, which was the first time that I had heard anything about it - he didn't say much except that because soy was currently very valuable on the world market, in order to generate more revenue for the government the President (Cristina Kirchner) had raised the export tax on soy. He said that people were angry because in his opinion, what she was doing was taking money from a sector of the population that had earned it and redistributing it as she pleased. For someone who isn't from Argentina and isn't very familiar with the politics, etc, this wasn't enough to get a really good idea of what was happening - especially because before he had said something, I wasn't aware that there was anything going on at all.

After hanging out with my friend Shannon for most of the afternoon, in early evening we ended up in a cafe to have some ice cream. As we were sitting and talking, we eventually noticed that the noise level outside the cafe (we were only maybe a block away from where I live), was steadily rising, until the sound of car horns was constant and impossible to ignore. When we left the cafe and I started walking back to my apartment, people were literally pouring out of the buildings of the area holding things like pots, pans and tea kettles and banging on them rhythmically with forks and spoons. The noise from the car horns were in support of these people on the sidewalks.

I got back to my apartment in time for dinner with my host family. Generally, I'm not a fan of the host family situation - Latin American culture is very big on family, so there seems to always be some function where the entire extended family convenes on the house for lunch/dinner and the gathering lasts all day til more or less 2 in the morning. As an only child who has been living pretty much independently for quite a while, this kind of thing (other things as well) is a little difficult to handle. But, one of the things that I appreciate most about the situation with the host family is that I have a resource when it comes to wanting to know something about the culture or what's going on in general. When I asked, I got a little bit more information than I had from my economics professor. They told me that Kirchner had raised the export tax on soy from 33%, which was already high, to 45% - almost half. In order to protest the fact that nearly half of their potential profit was being taken away from them, the people in the country were going on "strike" - but the word in this case has a bit more of an aggressive connotation.

Between my classes (like History of Argentine Political Processes) and just being here for a few months now, I've begun to learn that there is a very pronounced difference in Argentina between Buenos Aires and all of the people of the interior. The porteños (residents of B.A.) tend to that they're something separate, as if Buenos Aires is a country unto itself. It's true that it's very different - Buenos Aires is a developed city with a largely service-based economy, while the rest of the country is still largely agrarian. As a result of this and the fact that the seat of the government is in Buenos Aires, there has been historically a continuous tension between the capital and the interior, with people from the interior often feeling like they're being ignored by the government in favor of the porteños.

So, instead of trying to get the government to focus on just their problems, the country (campo) made their problem the problem of the porteños as well. Their "strike" consisted of forming a blockade of shipping - they took control of the main shipping routes and essentially stopped the flow of a lot of food into the city. Thus, now the newly-raised export tax was a problem in Buenos Aires as well, meaning it was also a more immediate problem for the government. Thus the pots and pans - if the strike were to continue, the porteños would run out of food to cook.

Protests continued for that whole week and into the next one at a fairly high level of intensity. As foreigners, the university advised us to stay away from Plaza de Mayo and other government centers, which were the focal points of the action. One day the university even shut itself down in the afternoon because it didn't want it's students to be obligated to walk to their classes (USAL is made up of various buildings strewn through the center of the city). It was easy to see why the protests were so intense - a couple days after talking with my host family, things such as beef and milk became nearly impossible to find in grocery stores and restaurants (big problem here - they eat very little besides meat).

Things are a lot quieter now - the government opened up negotiations 2 weeks ago, which doesn't necessarily mean the tax will change, but it was enough that now there is food in the grocery stores. Protests still go on - on Mondays, I have to walk past Congress to get from one class to the other, and last week I went a little out of the way to avoid a loud march that was going on - but the protests aren't nearly at the level where they were in the first couple weeks. Anyway, the entire process was something interesting to see.

Mate: What I am sure will be one of my most lasting Argentine souvenirs...

I thought this would be a good time to post about one of the more striking cultural habits of the Argentine people (and other South Americans as well, of course). Last weekend was my birthday, and so on Friday night, a bunch of my friends here took me out to dinner in San Telmo. Dinner was fantastic, but this post is about the tradition surrounding one of my gifts - my very own mate.

Based on my mother's reaction when I told her that my friends bought me a mate for my birthday, it's probably worth mentioning that you have to pronounce the word the Spanish way, with two separate syllables (thus, "mah-tay"). Mate is one of the things most typical of Argentina - mate is a drink similar to tea, and a mate is also the unique sort of cup that you drink it out of. It was the cup that was given to me as the gift.

The mate cups can be made out of various materials - wood, clay, metal..I've even seen some out of glass. But the most typical (and most Argentines would tell you the best) mates are made from calabasa, or gourds. The gourds are hollowed out and dried, and the outside is usually decorated in some way. The drink itself, like I said, is similar to tea, but without any sort of bag. It's made from filtering hot water through dried yerba leaves. You prepare it (this is the abbreviated/basic version - there are a thousand ways that people prepare their mate based on personal taste) by almost filling your mate cup with the dried yerba, inserting and burying the end of a straw (bombilla), filling the gourd with hot water, and drinking. The bombilla is specially made - it's closed on one end and works in one of various ways to strain the water so that you're not drinking the leaves.

As a tea drinker to begin with, I guess I was kind of naturally inclined to like the mate, but the most appealing thing about the drink is the social custom that it represents. It would seem as though the drink is as often shared as it is drank solo. Long conversations crop up around drinking a full thermos' worth of mate, and and there are enough social and courtesy rules to go along with the sharing of the mate to fill a book, it seems. Basically, it provides an excuse to relax and hang out with people, which of course I love. And now that I have my own (thank you Lennart, Peter, and Cami) it's something that I can bring home with me :)

Oh, right. I have to take classes, too.

These past couple weeks have been a little crazy. Right after getting back from the Mendoza/Santiago trip, I had to settle in with my new host family and then one day later, classes started! Since then, I've been busy adjusting to the new routine between the host family and classes, which has been generally a pretty confusing and tiring process. Before classes started, all of us were advised to research and find between 10 and 15 classes that appealed to us, and then in first week or so, try out them ALL to get a feel for different professors, times, teaching styles, etc., so that in the end of all this we would be able to choose 5 classes that would be good fits for us. Of course, for a lot of us, the first consideration we had to take was whether or not we could understand a reasonable amount of what the professor was saying. After being in classes for three weeks now, and having had endless changes made to my schedule, I've finally managed to get a good idea of what my schedule looks like - let's hope that at this point, no more changes are going to be made:
- Español para Extranjeros (Spanish for Foreigners)
- Seminario de la Historia de las Ideas y Procesos Políticos Argentinos (History of Argentine Ideas and Politcal Processes)
- Historia del Arte Hispanoamericano y Argentino (Argentine/Latin American Art History)
- Economía Política (Politcal Economy/Macroeconomics)
- Dibujo - Anatomia Artística (Drawing - Artistic Anatomy)

Shut up. Economics totally compensates for Drawing.

I think I've overall gotten pretty lucky with professors, although it's going to be interesting to adjust the differences in general teaching style between here and the States, I think. We'll see! I'm sure I'll be reporting back on this more later.

Observations

One of the purposes of this journal is supposed to be cultural comparison and reflection. So, in that spirit, here are some things you may or may not have known/guessed about this wonderful city and it's culture:

1. Mullet-Mania
One of the striking things about Argentina right off the bat is how infused it is with American culture. American movies play in the theaters, released only shortly after their release in the U.S. Familiar music plays in bars and cafes. This is enjoyable, because the most commonly-heard American music is from the 80's era and is thus very nostalgic. Walks down the street bring pieces of songs by The Police to your ears - it's fantastic. However, another 80's trend has also endured, and that is the mullet. Guys, girls...everyone. They're everywhere. It's awful. And tragic! You see, the Argentines are naturally a very beautiful people. General European descent tosses the occasional pair of bright blue eyes into the usual mix of dark hair and golden skin. As a female, the number of attractive men around makes it difficult to focus your attention in any one direction or on any one task. But chances are, at least 75% of these lovely individuals will be sporting a mullet. One of the guys in the program compared it (aptly, I thought) to the Plague.

2. Going to the Movies.
I don't have much to say on this topic because I have not yet been. This is because I only today figured out how going to the movies works here. It's nothing like the informal affair it is in the U.S. - sure, teenagers descend en-masse on the weekends, but did you know you have to buy tickets in advance? And that they won't allow you into the theater after the starting time of the film? And that on your ticket prints out an assigned seat? It's true! From what I understand, I'd compare it more to going to the Symphony than to the movies. I have to admit that now that I'm aware of these differences, I think I approve.

3. Not Service-Oriented.
But not necessarily in a bad way! Unless you're interested in experimenting with the "fast" food - something that I'm convinced is an absolute complete myth. I made an attempt at McDonalds and was completely confounded. There seems to be little to no order involved. Lines are ambiguous, cashiers are slow, and the whole thing probably entailed at least 20 minutes of waiting. It's confusing, because everyone behind the counter is definitely working very quickly. They run - yes literally run - back and forth, they whip trays out like lightning, everyone seems extremely busy, but it just doesn't come together. Not that I'd ever recommend fast food outside the realm of when serious comfort food is needed, but I definitely do not recommend it here.
In real restaurants, the experience is also completely different than that in the States. The usual (as I've found so far) is to walk into a bar or cafe and seat yourself. It might be a good idea to acknowledge one of the staff as you're sitting, but in my experience I'd say it's not necessary. Relatively quickly, a waiter (camarero/a) will be over with menus. If you already know what you want to drink, you can order right away, or you can take time to peruse the wine list. But after the initial delivery of the menus, you pretty much run the show. In the States, it's normal for the waiter to come and take your order at their discretion. They bring you the food, they check in to see how things are going, they refill your drinks (no free refills in my experience here so far - everything here, even the water, is bottled), they check about dessert, and then they bring the check. Here you need to wave the waiter over to order or if you want anything at all - they're not going to check in with you. I think the idea here is to let you enjoy your meal, which is typically a very social custom, with minimal intrusion. There is no delivery of the check to rush you out of the restaurant, you ask for the check when you're ready. Pretty much any meal I've had out here has lasted around 2 hours, often more. One of my favorite aspects of the culture here so far, for sure.

4. Watch Your Step!
All of the sidewalks are made from tiles around 1x1.5 ft in dimension, and there isn't really a widespread effort to fix the sidewalks if these tiles are missing or broken. Those of you who know me well probably don't need to hear me say that this is a bit of a hazard for me, but seriously haha, it's treacherous. Add to that the fact that Buenos Aires is FULL of dogs. They're everywhere, always very tame and friendly, but usually without leashes and often without any distinguishable owner. And I'm assuming there aren't any laws about cleaning up after your dog - if so, it's apparently not enforced.

5. When people warn vegetarians about Argentina, they're not kidding.
These people put meat in EVERYTHING. Even with burgers - just the beef isn't enough, they put a good deal of ham (jamon) on it as well. My residence is in an extremely Jewish neighborhood, so you would think maybe this would be less apparent, but not so. You can order a sandwich or hamburguesa sin jamon, but guaranteed you'll get a more or less puzzled look for it.

6. When do these people sleep???
Clubs typically do not open until 2 AM. Bars open earlier, so that people can prepare themselves for the clubs, but seriously - don't clubs close at 2 in Boston? I got in at 5:30 AM last night, and clubs were still going strong. From what I hear, this is because most clubs have a "juniors" period from 10 or 11 until 1, when kids aged from like 11 upwards are able to go out and enjoy themselves. Then the clubs close, clean up, and open up again at 2 for the real people. Crazy. 11-year-olds in clubs.

7. PDA to the EXTREME.
You know how some people in the states feel awkward if they're hanging out with a couple and they're constantly holding hands or playing with each other's hair or giving each other little pecks of affection? Yeah, thats nothing. My definition of "sucking face" has reached a whole new level. And it's EVERYWHERE! Cafes, parks, all over the place, in broad daylight and in full view of everyone. I'm pretty sure I've seen things get as intense as they possibly can while the perpetrators are still clothed. Maybe eventually I'll get used to it, but for now my jaw still drops when people start making out when they're standing in front of me in line, or when I can see people's tongues in action from across the street.

Those are all the reflections I have for now. Miss you guys :)

Mendoza/Santiago

What you've all been waiting for: my first journey out of the Buenos Aires area.

On Friday, February 29, after suffering through the written and spoken final examinations for our month-long Spanish Intensive, 2 friends and I set off for Retiro - home of the main bus terminal in Buenos Aires. At about 7 or 7:30, we started the 14 or 15 hour journey to Mendoza, Argentina. It became clear to me very quickly (not that I'd had many doubts in the first place) that I was going to have a good time traveling with Lennart and Peter - almost immediately after the bus left the terminal, we started in on the first of many great conversations that we would have over the course of the trip - both of these guys are very great and interesting people, and I'm really grateful that I've had opportunities like this trip to get to know them better. Besides the wonderful company, a standout for me of the ride to Mendoza was the night sky over las Pampas (the plains). I'm pretty sure I've never seen anything like it before, but it literally took my breath away in the middle of the night, after the movie when I was trying to get to sleep, when I pulled aside the curtain on the window to see what there was to see and I was hit with a sky so incredibly packed with stars. Very cool - unfortunately for all of you, photos could never capture such a thing ;)

Mendoza is a much smaller city than Buenos Aires (only 100-150,000 people) located close to the western border with Chile. Our bus got in around 9:30 or so in the morning, so the first order of business was to find something to eat and find a hostel. After stopping at a cafe for a quick medialuna (croissant), we wandered around the city for a bit searching for the tourism office. When we found it, there was of course a billion cards and fliers for everything Mendoza had to offer - hostels, restaurants, "adventure" activities like rafting, trekking, etc. We talked to the guy at the office for a bit and he pointed us in the right direction for a hostel, and then we set out for Plaza Independencia, a beautiful park in the center of the city. We found a hostel close by and set all our stuff down, etc. This was actually my first hostel experience - it was interesting, and I liked it. We got put in a "dorm" room - basically, 10 beds occupied by a really interesting variety of people. In our case, our roommates were a bunch of guys that had just gotten back the night before from climbing Aconcagua (which I'm pretty sure is the highest mountain outside of the Himalayas...) They hadn't met before doing the climb together, which apparently took about 2 weeks, but they were from all around the world and had a lot of interesting stories to tell, even if they and their stuff smelled a little bad.

That day, after lunch, we went out to book all the adventure-type stuff we wanted to do. Originally, Peter had wanted to go skydiving...but between the price of that and the fact that neither I nor Lennart would be joining him, he gave up the idea and settled for paragliding instead, something that both the guys were really excited about and that I eventually came around to. Anyway, we booked rafting for the next day (Sunday) and paragliding for the day after that, with plans to leave for Chile Tuesday morning. The rest of the day was spent just generally chilling out and exploring a bit, getting some sun in the park, buying bus tickets for the next leg of the trip, etc.

We woke up bright and early the next day to be ready for our 8:30 AM pick-up for rafting. In the van on the way there, we met some girls from the University of Michigan who were studying abroad in Santiago - it was cool to compare experiences and such. The drivers of the van were awesome, there was a playlist going that was inexplicably full of 80's and 90's chick songs, which were very well received by the Michigan girls - the drive there was a lot of fun. This was also the first time that we were really driving into the Andes. The mountains that we saw that day were really just the foothills of the mountain range, but as I had not yet seen the real thing I was incredibly impressed. Beautiful. Rafting itself was awesome, too. I had never done the real thing before and thus got a little nervous when we were being instructed on what to do if the boat flipped over and whatnot, but it turned out to be a nice ride without any problems. I liked the group in our boat, the guide was fun, and all of the dialog basically consisted of making fun of us non-Spanish speakers, but in a very nice and good-natured way ;) Then after we finished the rafting tour, we hung out at the base for a while, where they had a small deck and pool by the river. I didn't wear sunscreen, so after this I pretty much looked like a lobster for the rest of the trip, but it was a good time. We headed back to the hostel around 4. The rest of the day was occupied by napping (for me anyway) general chilling and then later on, an excellent dinner. We went to a pool hall later on where we had a couple beers and I demonstrated absolutely none of the skills that I'd managed to pull off earlier at the rafting lodge. Basically, it was a very cool day. The next day, unfortunately, did not have optimal weather for paragliding, so we weren't able to go. We occupied ourselves instead by renting bikes in the morning and giving ourselves a self-guided tour of the city. It was a lot of fun - the parts I enjoyed most were biking through the parks - where I didn't have to worry so much about dodging cars and pedestrians. As you could probably guess, the bikes were not my idea - I'm pretty sure I hadn't ridden a bike since I was 13 and I definitely almost died like 8 times. After I nearly fell off trying to avoid running over an old man, only seconds after nearly getting hit by a car, Lennart summed it up very nicely: "Elisha, I think you attract danger."

Our bus to Chile left at 7:00 the next morning. I got up at 5:45, woke up the guys after I had showered, dressed in the dark. We got our stuff together then went downstairs for a quick breakfast of bread and butter. We checked out of the hostel and went outside to the still-dark street to hail a cab to the bus station. If we had been heading in a direction other than almost exactly West, the fact that I wasn't able to get to sleep for the first couple hours of the trip would have been fine, because I would have been able to claim seeing the sunrise over the Andes. As it was, watching the mountains around us getting higher and higher and more and more spectacular was a very cool experience (see photo album).

After arriving in Santiago around 4 and finding our amazing hostel that had been recommended to us by several friendly fellow travelers, we headed out to grab something to eat and see a little bit of the city. Tuesday was a fairly uneventful day, we booked the city tours that we would take on Wednesday and Thursday, tried a new fruit (tunas) which the really cool girl at who worked at the hostel showed us how to eat - her first piece of advice: carefully! The fruits have spots on them that just look like spots, but really they're tiny clusters of little spines, and because we didn't know this until she told us, Lennart's hands were full of them for a while after. The hostel was awesome - if anyone ever plans on spending time in Santiago, Hostel Plaza de Armas comes highly recommended. It's on the top floor of this really old building, and it overlooks Plaza de Armas, a plaza full of pine trees, artists, and street performers that is bordered by some of Santiago's most impressive architecture.

That night, in the process of finding a restaurant and eating dinner, we discovered that Santiago maybe isn't as friendly a city as Buenos Aires, and is significantly more expensive. We took a taxi out to Bella Vista, which we had been told would be the best part of the city to hang out in for dinner and maybe something afterwards. The taxi charged us too much and only took us to the outskirts of the barrio - we didn't really like what we saw so we got dinner and went back the hostel. The next day we had our city tour, which was cool. We walked around the city and got to know it a little better, and we even saw a cute little play about the founding of Santiago. Our guide was really cool - during the tour, we saw the good side of Bella Vista, and the guide recommended us a club for that night as well. After the tour, Peter chilled out in the hostel while Lennart and I took a short walk to see the Palace, stopping for some ice cream (helado) on the way, which did not in any way compare to the helado in Buenos Aires. The palace was beautiful, and afterwards we ducked into Starbucks (they don't have them in Buenos Aires, nor, apparently, in the Netherlands, so this was quite the treat for Lennart) for a coffee and some conversation. After heading back to the hostel, checking our email and collecting Peter, we headed out to Bella Vista again (the good part this time), had some dinner, and then left for the club that our guide had recommended to us (El Clandestino). Definitely a more enjoyable night overall.

Thursday we had another tour, but this time of a small coastal town called Isla Negra. Here we were given a tour of one of the houses of Pablo Neruda, Chile's Nobel-Prize winning poet. The house was really interesting - Neruda was a definite eccentric, with collections of everything from sea-shells to insects to old ships' figureheads, all of which decorated various parts of the house. Neruda wasn't the reason we chose Isla Negra, though - this tour marked the first time that Peter, Lennart, or myself had seen the Pacific Ocean. After the tour in Isla Negra and a little time to take in the sea, we went to a small town called Pomaire for a late lunch. The restaurant can definitely be described as "authentic" - it was in a large, barn-like structure, with a dirt floor and various animals (cats, chickens...) running around. The food was delicious though, and afterwards we were able to walk around the town a little bit - a town known for its crafts, especially copperworks and ceramics.

We didn't have much time left after we returned to Santiago from the tour - we hung out in the hostel for a little bit, then went to get something to eat. We didn't have time to go too far, so we ended up in a mall food court, where I was assaulted by signs for every single type of American fast food - KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Burger King, McDonalds - seeing all of these together in such a small space was a little overwhelming. But we ate and then headed back to the hostel to collect our stuff, then left for the bus station, to catch our bus back to Mendoza that would be leaving at 11. The ride back was mostly taken up by sleeping, save the one part where we had to go through customs at about 3 AM, in the middle of the frigid Andes. But we arrived safely back in Mendoza at around 7 AM and then spent wayy too long trying to find a hostel where we could sleep for a few hours before having to get ready for our paragliding appointment (that we had re-scheduled after being disappointed on Monday) at 3:30 that afternoon. But with the help of a kind gentleman at a bed and breakfast who made some calls for us, we were able to find one and get a couple hours of sleep which were desperately needed (and showers, too). Then, after a quick lunch it was time for paragliding! There was a little bit of a scare with the weather, we thought that again, all of us might not be able to go, but then the sky cleared up and everyone was able to jump. Very cool - I'll try to post the video here so the facebook-less can see it as well.

After all this, it was finally time to return to Buenos Aires. Our bus went through the night and we got into B.A. around noon on Saturday. We had paid a few extra pesos to get the better seats this time around, so it was a lot easier to sleep on the way back than it had been before. We shared a taxi back from the bus station in Retiro and then parted ways. It was a great trip, with great people, and could be directly responsible for me developing a bit of an addiction to travel - since returning from Mendoza, I've already spent a weekend in Montevideo, Uruguay and plans are in the works to head to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil as well. Sorry it took so long to tell you all about it, but you can expect one or two more posts soon, there has been some interesting stuff going on in Argentina the past couple weeks that I think deserves a mention. Miss you guys!

Photo Album
Parapente Takeoff

Hello everyone! I know it's been a while but things here have been crazy busy in the last week or two and they're not even close to calming down yet. I've been going through the process of trying to figure out which classes I need to take, trying to figure out where I'm living (I'm off to meet with prospective host family within the hour), and trying to get everything together for tomorrow, which is the final exam for our pre-semester Spanish course (I can't believe it's over!) This isn't going to be a long post, as I have to leave shortly to walk to what will possibly become my apartment here, but I wanted to drop in and give everyone some kind of explanation for my recent absence.

Unfortunately, this absence is going to continue for a while - directly after my exam tomorrow I am leaving for Mendoza (another city in Argentina, near the Andes) with my friends Peter and Lennart. We have a decent-sized break before classes start on March 10, and Peter and Lennart invited me along on their trip across the continent. We'll be going by bus to Mendoza, then to Santiago in Chile, then to Córdoba, then back to Buenos Aires. The whole trip is going to be 7 or 8 days and I won't have the time or resources to keep in touch while I'm away, but don't worry, you can all expect a huge post about my adventures after I return :) For everyone at Northeastern, I hope you have a fantastic spring break and I'll talk to you guys soon - miss you!

"That was really fun. Wait, is that the sun coming up?"

I never pegged myself for a going-out person. Sure, I like to have fun, but it's always been in a very chill, drinks-with-friends kind of way. I dismissed clubs (here called boliches) as being not really my thing. After last night, I can definitely see that changing over the course of the next five months.

The schedule doesn't bother me as much as I would have expected it to. We didn't even leave the residence until probably 12:30 or so. In a large group - 15 or so, mixed Argentine and international, all from the dorm, we hopped on the #64 bus to god knows where (I love the Argentines here in the dorm - they just take care of everything and shuffle you off from place to place and all you have to do is enjoy the ride), and ended up at this bar. I was really into this bar, although I can't remember the name. It was a big place, downstairs where you entered was crowded and trendy, upstairs was dark with pounding music and party lighting, and then there was a roof deck outside where you could just chill out and socialize. I liked that you could more or less just choose the environment that you wanted. The conversation and company were awesome - I think that we got really lucky as far as the group goes, everyone's just really nice and fun and interesting. And the Argentines in the dorm are by and large awesome as well - they're really interested in getting to know everyone and really want everyone to have a good time, which makes them completely awesome to be around.

We left the bar by 3, already having a great time, and walked en-masse to Amerika, the club of the night. We were told on the way (pretty long walk...had to be 20 blocks? couldn't say) that this was a gay-friendly club. This turned out to be a massive understatement. The place was absolutely crazy, there were practically naked dancers - both women and men, in balconies off the walls, people were making out everywhere, and making out might be putting it mildly. But the atmosphere was pretty cool and the drinks were all included in the 40 peso cover (maybe $12-13). The club was huge - multiple levels, with this huge glass structure on one of the upper levels that kind of looked like a space pod and that people danced in. Crazy place. I had a fantastic time. Everyone that went in (only about half the group from the bar continued on to Amerika) was cool with the kind of club it was, which was cool, although it was interesting to see the guys' level of comfort decrease rapidly as the night went on and they were exposed to the club's generally "help yourself" attitude towards groping. I thought this was pretty funny - as girls, unwanted touching is kind of a fact of life in clubs, so this wasn't anything new to us, but I don't think it's something that guys usually have to deal with and it was definitely amusing and interesting to see how they handled it.

I left with Shannon and Lennart around 5:30 or 6 and we grabbed a cab back to the dorm. Once I got into bed, I passed out instantly - I woke up a couple hours later when my roommate Emma got up and realized that I still had my contacts in and was pretty much fully clothed. It was already broad daylight at this point, so I changed into shorts and a t-shirt, took my contacts and went back to sleep til about 1. From what I've gathered, the rest of the group from the club didn't get back to the dorm until 8 or 8:30. I'm not really in that league yet as far as endurance goes, but check back with me in a month or so ;)

Saturday's Tour

The delay on this post is due to the fact that I didn't want to do it without pictures, and I was too lazy to get around to loading the pictures before right now.

Saturday all of the people in the program who had arrived so far met up at a pizza place across the street from where most of our classes are - "La Continental". Sidenote: all of the pizza that I've seen here is made with like, 5 pounds of cheese. But anyway, as Anna and I had gotten here a day early and had thus not been driven from the airport by the program people, this was the first time I met Viviana, the main coordinator of the program. I also met most of the other people who are in the program - there were a few that trickled in later on due to rescheduled flights, etc, but this was definitely the majority of the group. I still don't have all the names straight.

After lunch we were shown where to meet for our Spanish classes which would meet Monday (today), and then we were put onto a small tour bus with our guide, a professor of Argentine history at the University of Buenos Aires. The bus took us first to the Plaza de Mayo, which I had seen before, then into San Telmo, which so far is probably my favorite neighborhood that I've seen. It's quiet and very old, with cobblestone streets and old, Mediterranean - style houses. After consulting my guidebook (as I could only understand about half of what the tour guide was saying) I learned that San Telmo used to be where the richer and more elite of the city lived. There's a strong Italian influence on the whole city, which can be seen especially in the San Telmo architecture. San Telmo, apparently, was Buenos Aires's richest neighborhood until disease struck in the early 20th century, and everyone who could afford to move out, did, leaving San Telmo to the poor. The big Mediterranean houses were converted into smaller apartments and shops, and eventually San Telmo turned into the place where lots of artists and musicians and general bohemians made their home. Basically it's awesome.

From San Telmo we drove to La Boca (passing the gigantic stadium that's home to Buenos Aires soccer team the Boca Juniors), which was the most touristy place I've seen yet. For example: instead of dancing in the streets, which is touristy enough, the only tango dancers that I saw in La Boca were posing for pictures for tourists. La Boca was cool, but the neighborhood is very poor and as a result you're advised to stick to pretty much just a two-block area, which is a huge tourist attraction and is thus heavily patrolled by police. The buildings are beautiful - old and really brightly colored. I'm not sure if this is true, but I think I read that the reason the buildings are colored the way they are is because the inhabitants of La Boca were too poor to afford to buy paint, so they used whatever colors were left over from the nearby port. Leaving La Boca, the bus took a back route, I think on specific instruction of our guide. I think he realized that from what we would probably see in our time here, we might see Buenos Aires only as a cool, cosmopolitan city - I think he wanted us to see the poverty too. It was tough to look at the conditions that the people were living in as we drove out of La Boca. Houses were basically lean-tos made out of tossed-aside boards and pieces of metal. I don't know - I find it difficult to describe.

From La Boca we drove through Puerto Madero and Microcentro, and our last stop was in Recoleta, where our tour guide actually left us. I can't imagine more contrast than that that existed between Recoleta and La Boca - Recoleta was beautiful, full of parks, clearly the wealthiest neighborhood that we had seen so far. The main site here was the Recoleta cemetery, which was like no cemetery I've seen before. Basically within this huge, walled in area, the richest families of Buenos Aires all had small mausoleums, where the dead would be entombed. These structures were amazing, with huge statues and stained glass - a lot of them appeared to be miniature Gothic cathedrals. The place was beautiful but very eerie - and the eeriness wasn't helped by the fact that there were tons of stray cats just wandering around the cemetery, lying on the entrances to the tombs and sleeping under the statues.

The whole trip was pretty cool. It was good to meet everyone and kind of get a chance to hang out together for a bit, exchange some phone numbers, etc. After touring the cemetery (sin tour guide) with a couple of the girls - Shannon, Jessi, and Emma, my roommate - we grabbed some helado and sat for a while, and then made the trek back to the residence - maybe half an hour's walk, or a little more.

First day at USAL

Hey guys, I hope you'll excuse my lack of originality, but I took most of this post from an email I sent to my mom today. It wasn't necessarily what I had planned for the next post, but after describing my first day to my mom I figured that this is close to the kind of thing that Northeastern likes to see here. So here goes:

Today I had my first day at Universidad del Salvador - it wasn't classes yet, just a basic orientation and then all of us had to go into a room individually with a team of 2 of the coordinators and they evaluated our speech. It was a little intimidating going into it but then once it actually got started it was actually kind of fun. I didn't even realize I was being evaluated at first - the guy came in to get me out of the room that everyone was in and took me into another room and I sat down opposite him and another woman and it was just a bunch of small talk at first - where are you from, when did you get here, where are you living, how do you like the weather here, how does it compare to the weather back home, how long have you been studying Spanish, how long are you here for, etc etc. We talked for a minute or two before I realized that as we were having the conversation the woman was making a bunch of check marks on a piece of paper. But it was very low-pressure, they were really nice.

The second part of the test was interesting, after all the small talk the guy chose a photo from a stack that he had and put it in front of me and asked me to describe what was going on. The photo was of a man lying on a couch in a psychologist's office and the psychologist sitting next to him listening. After I described the obvious, they asked me to basically create a story to go along with it - how is the patient feeling, how is the psychologist feeling, etc. When I thought about it afterwards I thought it was really clever the way they were framing their questions in order to basically force me into using specific grammatical structures. For example (if you're interested):

"Que son las edades de los hombres? Son mismos?" (What are the ages of the men? Are they the same?)

"No, el psicologo es mas viejo que el paciente" (No, the psycologist is older than the patient)

By asking me if the ages were the same, I was forced to compare the two using "mas" and "que" rather than just stating the two ages separately, which would have been simpler to do grammatically.

Then after I had described the picture to their satisfaction the guy told me that I was to pretend like I was a patient calling him, a psychologist, to cancel an appointment. I had no idea what he said when he said this (Professor Sadow - my Spanish professor last semester - told me that there was a study done once and it showed that Spanish speaker delivered considerably more syllables per minute than did English speakers, so it's not just our imagination or Spanish inadequacies that makes it seem like they're speaking lightning-fast). But when I apologized for not understanding, he repeated it slower and I understood. We ran through this exercise fairly quickly, which was fun, I managed to make them laugh a couple times at least. I'll find out what level they place me in when I get there tomorrow, but I think it went fairly well. One of the things that I've noticed is that when I'm having a conversation with someone, they start off slow, and then their speed increases based on how comfortable I seem with the Spanish. If it's a bad day for me Spanish-wise or early in the morning, I've noticed they either speak really slow or just try whatever English they know. So basically I've concluded that if someone suddenly starts speaking quickly and with complicated tenses/vocabulary thrown in, it's because I'd been doing pretty well....up until that point.

The building where all of the Spanish classes will be - and possibly several of my semester classes - is about a half hour's walk from the residence, which in 90+ degree heat and full sun, is pretty damn far. So far though, I've enjoyed the walk somewhat - it feels like exercise, and thus makes me feel productive. Granted, I've only gone there and back twice so far, it might get old fast. After walking so much, I'm beginning to think that it will be nice once it starts cooling down a bit for autumn - the heat makes everything just feel kind of dirty - even the air tastes dusty.

We got the standard "You're in an urban environment and thus in constant danger" lecture at orientation today. Girls were told to mind their bags carefully, guys were told to keep their wallets in the front pockets and not to wear cargo pants. There have been constant warnings about acting touristy, speaking English loudly in public, etc - all things that usually come with just being careful in the city. In my experience so far - and we're not in a particularly rich or touristy part of town - is that the city is nice, and the people are generally friendly and helpful.

I'm going to try and put up some more photos from our tour of the city on Saturday, either later tonight or tomorrow. Stay tuned guys! :)

Estoy aqui.

This constitutes my first entry in what will hopefully fulfill the Northeastern University journal requirement for students studying abroad.

I arrived in Buenos Aires yesterday around 10:30 AM local time (Buenos Aires is 2 hours ahead of the U.S. East coast), with Anna, the only other Northeastern student participating in the program this semester. After passing through customs, grabbing our bags, changing some currency, and going through exit security, we grabbed a cab together from the airport to the dorm (Proyecto Alfa 2000). The drive into the city was nice, the airport is a bit further out into the countryside so we passed a lot of green areas and even a couple farms before we started to see the development of the city. First cultural observation: the drivers here are crazy. If there are such things as speed limits or even traffic laws in general, they have yet to become apparent to me here. Cars pretty much stay within the marked lanes, but seem to go as fast as they can and don't think twice about cutting across 2+ lanes of traffic without warning to make any turns that they need to. In addition, there are countless people on motorcycles and motorbikes that ignore the lanes completely and just weave in and out of traffic as needed, especially in traffic jams or at stoplights.

The city is beautiful, but hot and loud. I'm not entirely certain what I expected, but they way Buenos Aires appears isn't quite what I expected. Coming into the city from the outside, it doesn't right away occur to you that you're entering a city of 3-4 million people...the streets are narrow and the traffic is light and the sky isn't being blocked out by buildings. Then the cab driver will take just one turn and instantly you'll be plummeted into the urban reality of traffic jams, noise, and pollution - not nearly as bad as it could be, but still obvious, especially with this kind of heat (mid- to high 80's since I've been here).

Today (after waking up around 11:30) Anna, Anna's roommate Isabella (from Quebec), and I decided it might be good to walk around and explore a bit. We decided to visit the Plaza de Mayo - the block that houses the Casa Rosada (home of the president) as well as some other government buildings. We grabbed a quick lunch of empanadas at a small neighborhood place where the people were really friendly (I definitely plan on going back). When we were finished, we grabbed the #29 bus from Viamonte (the avenue where my dorm is) to the Plaza, and then from there walked down Calle Florida (an entirely pedestrian street that was packed with people and every kind of shopping you can imagine). Florida is a pretty long street (maybe 10 blocks) that goes north from Plaza de Mayo and connects it with the Plaza San Martin, which might be my favorite place I've seen so far - pictures to come. It's a large park with lots of trees and shade but also huge sunny grassy areas that seem to just stretch out into the city. There are benches everywhere and walking paths criss-cross the whole thing, with small statues tucked away in the trees, a playground or two, etc. It was these parts of the city that most reminded me of Barcelona, which is the only European city I've seen - but the Plazas are surrounded by huge buildings with gorgeous architecture, and that feel seeps through to the surrounding areas, as well. Those are called Puerto Madero and Microcentro - basically, downtown. The dorm where I'm living is in Palermo - a short ride by subway (subte) but a pretty long walk - we did it today and my feet are pretty sore. The dorm is probably 15-20 blocks more or less to the west of San Martin. From what I hear, all of the Buenos Aires neighborhoods (barrios) have very distinct personalities - I'm definitely looking forward to exploring San Telmo and Recoleta in particular.

More people from the program arrived today - I have a roommate Emma who is from Australia, and Anna got another roommate Malin from Sweden. There are also 2 more girls, one from Georgia and one from Tennessee. The seven of us went out to dinner tonight at a nice restaurant a couple blocks away - it was fun to kind of get to know everyone, it was a good time, with really good conversation. Everyone seems really nice and interesting. I also had my first experience where it's completely natural to drink half a bottle of wine with dinner - lovely.

That's all for my first entry. To my friends: keep checking back! Northeastern requires that I write at least once per week, so this is basically where you'll hear of any adventures to come and so on. I miss you guys and you should all know that as much fun as I have here, all of this would be exponentially better if you guys were here to enjoy it with me. Keep those emails coming!